The State of AYC is awesome. Or, as Board Chair John King mentioned — strong.

In it’s second year, the State of AYC was the largest event AYC has ever produced. Board Treasurer, State of AYC Chair, and 2014 Member of the Year Emmy Hill presided over the event. Emmy also honored our committee members of the year, which included:

• Imagine Committee Member of the Year – Rob Madsen
• Leadership Service Committee Member of the Year – Danny McKean
• FAVE Awards Committee Member of the Year – Reese Cisneros
• Poker Committee Member of the Year – Tricia Kellam
• Tailgate Committee Member of the Year – Ali Putnam
• Ambassador of the Year – Angel Horne
• AYC Member of the Year – Emmy Hill & Kelly Mosser

AYC’s Board Chair John King discussed 2014 and our five-year legacy, spearheading the call to action for leadership from members and the community at large. In doing so, we honored our past chairs and founders.

I am biased of course, but John’s speech was a powerful reminder of what we as a community can do when we set our minds to it. The growth and training AYC can provide for future and current leaders is remarkable. We are proud to be taking that to the next level in the coming year.

After rounding out nearly one full year of service to AYC, I was proud to announce some new initiatives for 2015. The first is the revitalization of our perks program, which currently includes a dozen partnerships from across the community to connect our members and help them grow professionally and personally. We will be sending out redemption instructions soon and these perks are live for every active member.

We have also made membership easier than ever before. We announced the creation of a new corporate level that increases the ability for companies to invest in AYC and their own young leaders while lowering the cost to do so by nearly 20%. AYC also offers a payment plan for individual members, which lowers the threshold for you to get involved and make a difference on your first day.

The most exciting initiative is the creation of a new skills series that will come online after SxSW. This will create tangible soft and hard skills training opportunities at an affordable rate for our members (and the community at large) to improve their careers and themselves. We are partnering with the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network of Austin (YNPN) and are in final talks with several local corporate partners to make this program happen.

As we get the final details together, we want to encourage you all to get involved in our upcoming civic engagement programs including a conversation on the boards and commission process at the city level, session soiree, and upcoming conversation with Mayor Steve Adler. In addition, save the date for our next big event: our annual poker tournament will be June 11th at Chateau Bellevue. If you are interested in sponsoring or being a part of any of these events (or AYC in general), please reach out to Katherine Randow at Katherine@AustinYoungChamber.org.

The final component to the program was to bestow the Inspiring Leader Award to newly-elected City Council Member Greg Casar, who at a mere 25 years of age has already done more from a civic engagement and leadership standpoint than most of us can say. Greg encouraged us all to lean in, get involved, and make a difference in our community.